fast boot

[papaschtroumpf]

I'm considering getting new laptop and the most requested feature in the family is that it should boot fast, since it's off most of the time, but when you want to check a movie time or whatever, you don;t want to wait 5 minutes for the laptop to boot.

what should I look at to help boot time?

- SSD: that's the obvious but may hurt the budget (I'm looking at spending $500-$700 on the laptop)
- RAM: I'm guessing I want at least 4G, and that it will make a difference over 2G?
- processor speed: probably not a huge factor in boot time?
- startup programs: if remove bloatware, is there a particualr antivirus and/or firewall that has good boot times?
- I use firefox, would using Chrome help with boot time? firefox tends to be quite slow booting. Maybe I'll try Chrome on my current laptop. how about Opera?

ideally I'd like less that 30s from power on to ready to browse/email...

 

[KlokWyze]

Have the newest RAM, BUS, CPU. Install as few appz as possible. Go with Windows XP or 7. Large amounts of RAM doesn't increase boot speed, it's for handling apps or lots of apps with a lot of overhead. Remove all the bloatware, which you already knew. For XP you can run 'msconfig' from a run dialog and minimize the amount of startups as well.

Chrome is fast than Firefox IMO. Opera is the fastest, but pretty damn buggy/incompatible. I think Internet Explorer 64-bit is pretty fast though....... I might get a lot of hate for that.

For free network security stuff I use Comodo 64 bit firewall and occasionally scan with Malwarebytes and Spybot S&D. Avoid Zone Alarm because it increased my boot time by quite a bit actually...

 

[Chiropteran]

If you just want to browse/check email, have you looked at the asus netbooks using "express gate"? It's basically a small linux distro designed for instant booting.

 

[KeypoX]

Seagate Momentus XT hybrid SSD

 

[TimeKeeper]

- SSD: that's the obvious but may hurt the budget (I'm looking at spending $500-$700 on the laptop)


ideally I'd like less that 30s from power on to ready to browse/email...

You definitely can get a i3 laptop for around $500.
Decent 64GB SSD is around $150, which still within your budget.
ex. SATAIII Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG (then, buy an external enclosure for your laptop drive for back up purpose)

 

[jchu14]

If the laptop is fine other wise, you should try putting the laptop to sleep mode instead of off. It uses a tiny bit more power than off, but allows you to boot up the computer in < 5 seconds.

 

[Zap]

what should I look at to help boot time?

1) Remove bloat and have as close to ZERO things on startup as possible.

2) Use Hibernate, especially if you have less than 4GB RAM (less RAM, faster Hibernate operates). Unless you have a shit-ton of RAM or your HDD is really slow (see #3) most notebooks come out of Hibernate a lot faster than booting up. Also, Hibernate uses ZERO power. Sleep mode is good, but still trickles power.

3) Get an SSD. Seriously.

 

[papaschtroumpf]

XP hybernate is utter crap on this laptop, crashes all the time.
Sleep works OK but does use more power.

It's also nice to start on clean desktop everytime, not whatever junk you were looking at last time you used the computer.

 

[Rifter]

My laptop boots in under 30 seconds to Ubuntu, takes maybe 10 seconds longer for windows 7.

Its nothing special its got a Intel T6600 CPU, 4GB RAM and a WD 500GB 5400rpm drive. Killing all the startup crap will save you the most time.